The latest trend in enterprise Information Technology (IT) is the rapid adoption of the cloud computing paradigm. Cloud computing follows the enterprise adoption of virtualization technology to gain greater utilization of physical resources as well as increased operational efficiencies.
An objective of an open hybrid cloud model is to allow complete flexibility for the provisioning of application workloads across private and public cloud resource providers according to changing business objectives. One of the greatest challenges in realizing the benefits of the cloud computing operational model is in overcoming the discontinuities of data center and network boundaries across private and public cloud resource providers. These discontinuities frequently require compensation in the application software and workloads intended for the cloud resulting in increased complexity and operational burdens, which lessen the benefits of moving to the cloud.
The concept of software defined networking technologies has emerged as a means to address these boundaries across private and public cloud providers. Leading cloud technology companies have spent billions of dollars to acquire aspiring startup companies that provide technologies and products for this space. These technologies address the physical discontinuities encountered in private and public cloud infrastructure but also introduce significant complexity in the applications developed for the cloud that discover and configure the networking “plane” in which the cloud workloads operate. Additionally, the administration, monitoring, and management of the networking environment are made additionally complex by the real-time operation of the software defined network environment.